Tuesday, September 4, 2012

As people in China increasingly use
mobile phones for Internet access, the company which provided China’s answer to
Google, Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), has released a new browser. It also has plans of investing in a cloud
company center. "The
cloud-supported mobile Internet is the focus of the next wave of
innovation," said Chairman Robin Li, at the company’s annual conference.

Although Baidu operates China’s most
popular search engine, it is yet to catch up with rivals Tenacet and UCWeb in
web access.

China has the world’s largest Internet
market. Not only that, Internet access
through mobile phones and tablet PCs is growing at double the pace of the
overall market.

According to an official report, in
July, China had 538 million Internet users, an 11 percent rise from last year,
while the number of mobile Internet users was 388 million, up 22% from the
previous year.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the case filed
by Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) against SAP is likely to drag on for some
more years thanks to an appeal filed by the former. The business software maker wants the German
Company to pay additional damages for copyright infringement than what was earlier
agreed upon. SAP’s spokesman has
expressed the company’s disappointment. He said, "We agreed to a reasonable arrangement, since we believe
this case has already persisted long enough."

In August, SAP had agreed to pay Oracle
$306 million as damages and the latter had accepted the offer. In 2010, a jury in Northern California had
heard the case in which Oracle had accused SAP subsidiary, TomorrowNow of wrongfully
downloading millions of Oracle files and ruled that SAP should pay $1.3 billion
as damages.

But last year, a U.S. District judge
discarded this verdict and ruled that Oracle should either accept $272 million
or opt for a new trial.